Middle Eastern Realities

Not a shot was fired yet the Somali jihad was suddenly over…

Not a shot was fired yet the Somali jihad was suddenly over…

Yes. It was sweet — although many among the Western elites would prefer a “stable” Sharia-ruled Somalia. By Xan Rice in The Guardian:

Their fortress fell without a shot. After just nine days of clashes in Somalia’s hinterland, the Islamists who had vowed to fight to the death abandoned Mogadishu, the city they had governed since June. From having controlled most of southern and central Somalia, they were holed up yesterday in the southern port city of Kismaayo, facing annihilation by Ethiopian troops.Ali Mohamed Ghedi, Prime Minister in Somalia’s transitional government – an irrelevance until last week – rode triumphantly into Mogadishu on Friday, announcing the end of ‘terrorism’ in the country. Ethiopia, which together with the US has stoked fears about the rise of a terrorist state in the Horn of Africa, was basking in the success of a campaign that was swifter and more successful than anyone had predicted.

‘Nobody expected the Islamists to show this little political resilience,’ said Matt Bryden, a consultant to the conflict-monitoring body, International Crisis Group. ‘They were the first movement to pacify southern Somalia for 16 years, yet they crumbled like a pack of cards.’

The Guardian also recently published an article entitled “International lawlessness: The US-backed invasion of Somalia to topple its Islamists is a dangerous, illegal act of aggression,” by Salim Lone, UN spokesman in Iraq in 2003 and a columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya (thanks to Douglas Murray).